Immigration Minister Scott Morrison not telling the full story on asylum seeker arrivals

Updated
Tue 4 Feb 2014, 6:28 PM AEDT

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Scott Morrison says the Coalition's border protection policy has resulted in an 80 per cent reduction of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat. ABC Fact Check finds there's more to the story.

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Immigration Minister Scott Morrison says the Coalition's border protection policy has resulted in an 80 per cent reduction in asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat.

OnNovember 29 Mr Morrison said: "In the previous government after the announcement of the regional resettlement arrangement an average of 461 people not including crew were turning up on just over six boats every week. Since the commencement of Operation Sovereign Borders this has fallen by more than 80 per cent to just 78 people illegally arriving per week on less than two boats not including crew."

Mr Morrison and other Liberal MPs have been repeating these figures over the past few weeks, saying the reduction is the result "of our efforts under Operation Sovereign Borders".

The claim: Scott Morrison says the Coalition's border protection policy has resulted in an 80 per cent reduction in asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat.

The verdict: There has been an 80 per cent reduction. However, the reduction is part of an earlier trend which began under the former government.

Labor, however, disagrees. On the ABC's Q&A program on November 25, Opposition treasury spokesman Chris Bowen repeatedly said Mr Morrison's figures were "just not right". When ABC Fact Check asked for the basis of his comments, a spokesman for Mr Bowen said the comparison period the Coalition was using was "disingenuous".

"Labor had only announced the PNG arrangement on 19 July and from experience, there is always a lag in terms of policy measures having an effect," the spokesman said. "If you look at the two weeks prior to the election, a month or so after the PNG arrangement had been announced and was being implemented, there was clearly an effect being experienced."

In the period before Operation Sovereign Borders began - July 19 to September 17 - 3,753 asylum seekers arrived on 55 boats. In the period since - September 18 to November 29 - 751 asylum seekers arrived on 15 boats. Fact Check calculates an average of 431 asylum seekers were arriving on an average of six boats per week in the earlier period. In contrast, an average of 72 people were arriving on less than two boats per week in the later period.

Based on this comparison, Mr Morrison's claim checks out. There was an 80 per cent reduction in asylum seekers during this period. However it is important to note the data shows a clear and consistent tapering off from late July which continued to the election, as Mr Bowen's spokesman claimed.

Longer term data

ABC Fact Check has also examined monthly data of asylum seeker boat arrivals over the past five years.

The data shows a clear peak in July 2013, when 4,236 asylum seekers arrived. The following month there were 1,585 arrivals - the lowest number in five months. That's a 60 per cent reduction, and in subsequent months the numbers continued to drop.

This data presents a more complete picture to Mr Morrison's claim, showing the boats began to slow dramatically soon after Mr Rudd's July 19 announcement, a trend which has continued.

What the analysts say

Fact Check consulted two researchers from the University of Queensland who specialise in data analysis, Dr Angela Higginson and Jason Ferris. They modelled the data and concluded that: "There has been a statistically significant reduction in the number of arrivals since the Coalition took Government... But it sits as part of a trend in reductions of arrivals that began with the last government. So in short, Mr Morrison is right, but he's not taking context into account."

There is no sign that the election of the Abbott Coalition Government has had any impact on arrivals whatsoever.

Angela Higginson

The researchers say the comparison period of before and after Operation Sovereign Borders used by Mr Morrison misses the point, "because this trend began back in July and there is no sign that the election of the Abbott Coalition Government has had any impact on arrivals whatsoever".

They say over the past five years, there have been several changes in the trend of asylum seeker arrivals, the most recent change being in July 2013, "but that there is no evidence of any further change in trend since the election".

Dr Higginson and Mr Ferris provided Fact Check with several charts to illustrate their points.

The below chart shows the change in arrivals from one week to the next during Mr Morrison's comparison period. Dr Higginson says it shows "there is no evidence that we're seeing a greater reduction happening over time". The red line is the point at which Operation Sovereign Borders began.

This chart shows the overall trend since July 19 and shows an average weekly reduction in arrivals of 16.3 per cent. The red line shows the point at which Operation Sovereign Borders began.

This chart shows the trend changes over the past five years, with the most recent change occurring in July 2013. Since then there has been an average of 57 per cent fewer arrivals each month. The researchers say "the model didn't show up any change in slope since July". The red lines show Mr Rudd's July announcement and the point at which Operation Sovereign Borders began.

The researchers note that the overall trend since July cannot necessarily be attributed to Mr Rudd's announcement, and say there is no telling how the trend will change in time.

"Bear in mind that as time goes on and there's more post-election data, we might see a shift in trend that isn't apparent in the current data. Statistical modelling gets more sensitive with more data points," Dr Higginson said.

"However, the data shows that... there is no evidence to suggest that the new Government’s policies have had any additional impact on arrivals over and above the trend already in place."

Other factors to consider

One reason Labor says the time period Mr Morrison is using is "disingenuous" is because it says there is a lag between when a policy is announced and when it begins to take hold. Mr Rudd's announcement on July 19 may have had an immediate impact on the number of asylum seekers embarking on their journey, but not on those who had already started it, including: people already on the water and not yet intercepted; people waiting to board a boat in a rural area with no access to communications; or people who had started their journey and already paid the people smugglers and decided to take their chances.

"For those who make their way towards Australia... there are very few other options if they are looking for an asylum-receiving country, with an established system for processing and providing legal status to refugees. The only other developed country in the region with an established refugee determination system is New Zealand, which is extremely difficult to reach for asylum seekers travelling via irregular means.

Thus, even if potential asylum seekers reach a transit country and become more informed about Australia's asylum policies, their options for deciding on an alternative destination country at that point in their journey are extremely limited. This is an important consideration in the context of Australian policy-making, raising the question of how effective deterrence measures targeting asylum seekers in transit can be, given the limited choices available to them at that stage of their journey."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told Fact Check that while policy can influence the flow of asylum seekers, a range of other factors are also at play:

"The key drivers of refugee movement... remain war, conflict and persecution in their homelands. The reasons why people flee their home countries and then sometimes move on out of their own regions are complex, and there is no typical journey for asylum-seekers who arrive in Australia.

Geography and physical accessibility (including, with respect to maritime movements, weather conditions) play a large part, and often there are historical or cultural reasons - including the presence of a large diaspora in the destination country - why asylum seekers of a certain nationality move toward certain industrialised countries.

The policies pursued by successive governments over the last 12 months that restrict access to Australian territory are also a factor as they remove the ability to make an asylum claim in this country."

Around the same time Mr Rudd announced his regional resettlement arrangements with Papua New Guinea, Indonesia agreed to a request from Mr Rudd to stop granting visas on arrival to Iranians. This could also have had an impact on asylum seeker arrivals in Australia, given the large number of people who come from Iran.

The verdict

There has been an 80 per cent reduction in asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat in the comparison period outlined by Mr Morrison. However, the data shows the number of arrivals began to slow significantly under Labor, soon after Mr Rudd's regional resettlement arrangement was announced.